Many of the rest of us have some degree of immunity, thanks to our access to counter-narratives and to loving contact with other human beings, but we are all impacted by this idea that everyone has a market value and this world in which so many of us are marketed as toys and trophies.

“It made sense in a primordial way when he breaks down Adam and Eve, the snake and chaos,” Mr. Arar says. “Eve made Adam self-conscious. Women make men self-conscious because they’re the ultimate judge. I was like, ‘Wow this is really true.’”

The changes in his life include starting to clean his room. “My mom’s been nagging me for years, but I’ve never done it until Dr. Peterson,” he says.

“You organize one shelf, you do that, just incremental challenges,” he says. “That makes you realize, ‘O.K., this is how I grow up.’”

She liked to go out with her friends and was not averse to a glass of wine or two, but the bar-hookup scene was not for her, and the idea of dating an old-fashioned churchgoing man was to her very appealing.